This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Prasad gathers three of the atlas's sacred foods built on one Hindu devotional structure, food offered to a deity and returned to worshippers as a blessing, moving from a single named sweet to the general practice and back to a place that practice made famous.
Modak is a steamed or fried dumpling of rice or wheat flour filled with grated coconut and jaggery, offered to Ganesha during Ganesh Chaturthi as his favorite food and then distributed as prasad. Stories of Ganesha's appetite for it, including one in which he eats more than his mount, a mouse, can carry, belong to the affectionate character popular telling builds around the deity, and the sweet is made in Ganesha temples and households through the festival's ten days before being shared among family and devotees.
Prasadam names the general practice modak is one instance of: food first offered to a deity, naivedya, then distributed to and eaten by devotees as a blessing returned rather than an ordinary meal. Cooking, presentation and consumption are treated as stages of one act of devotion, and the term covers a wide range of dishes across Hindu temple traditions, including the karah prasad of Sikh and some Hindu kitchens and the sweet ladoo prasad most associated with Krishna and Ganesha temples; unlike most of the atlas's other sacred foods, the practice is tied to no single festival or date.
The Tirupati Laddu is the specific sweet, its recipe held under Geographical Indication protection, distributed as prasadam to pilgrims at the Tirumala Venkateswara Temple, among the world's most visited pilgrimage sites, produced in enormous daily volume and treated by pilgrims as the blessed offering of Venkateswara made tangible, one of the most recognized named prasadam traditions in Hinduism.